There has been a proliferation of studies of ancient colour, and indeed the senses en bloc, across the last decade or so. But this is no scholarly fad: twenty-first-century research into colour perception continues to tackle a very old and contentious problem identified as far back as Goethe and Gladstone, one that probed the ability of the ancient eye to discriminate and understand colours in the rich and nuanced ways claimed by the modern West. Homer may well have mastered narrative, characterization and emotion (Gladstone argued), but — setting aside the ancient fallacy that he was blind — he and his contemporary audience appear to have attained a level of colour vision that was characteristic of a modern four-year-old infant. Since then, classicists have on the whole strived to rehabilitate ancient (mainly Greek) colour perception by claiming that colours operated in a very sophisticated — if often rather culturally different — way in the classical world, foregrounding luminosity, texture, saturation and other factors that are often lost in translation.

The present book, the third instalment in the Gorgias Studies in Classical and Late Antiquity series and developed from the author's doctoral dissertation, staunchly pursues the same agenda. Perhaps because it is not as manifestly problematic, Rome has traditionally not received the same privileged treatment as Greece, but Goldman sets out to demonstrate — through Roman discussions of colour terms, uses, descriptions and associations of cloth-dyes, chariot team colours, and face, hair and eye colour — that Romans were indeed sensitively attuned to colour and used it in highly versatile and symbolic ways. Indeed, the case she presents is very persuasive, although one might feel by now that she is preaching to the converted. Certainly, readers who want an introductory survey of Roman approaches to colour (particularly dyed clothes) and a synthesis of ancient literary evidence will be well-served.

The book comprises seven chapters ranging from a discussion of Roman dyes to Latin terms for colour variegation. G.'s introduction provides a useful summary of modern scholarly approaches and ideas, but omits some of the pivotal studies of Greek colour that have been at the heart of the scholarly debate as well as a handful of excellent recent French studies. It is not clear how helpful it is to begin the book proper with Aulus Gellius' sophistic dialogue about colour, which effectively deconstructs Greco-Roman colour vision. But then G. quickly moves on to the theme where she is clearly most at home, devoting three chapters to costume dyes, their social significance and moral associations. Some of the most successful sections of the book engage closely and in a sustained way with a particular text or context: 71ff., for example, deal with Trimalchio's polychromy and Petronius' use of colour to signal the freedman's excess and inappropriate status. Ch. 5 then revisits the uses of colour for the designation and discrimination of Roman chariot teams, and ch. 6 embarks on a reasonably wide-ranging study of colour in Roman physiognomic descriptions. In the final chapter, which is the book's most original contribution, G. examines Latin colour terms that express or allude to variegation (for example, versicolor, discolor), exploring some of the moral ramifications of certain individuals or objects whose color was compromised, unstable and unpredictable. Although the book is reasonably wide-ranging, several key themes — Roman ideas about the rainbow, the colores of oratory, polychrome marbles, cosmetics and so on — are passed over with barely a mention.

Pedantry is a tired exercise for twenty-first-century classical reviews. But it is not particularly encouraging to pick up a book whose cover-image shows a cropped painting from a Pompeian fullonica and claims this is a scene from a ‘dyer's shop’. In fact this book needed better proof-reading and copy-editing across the board: footnote references do not always match up with the bibliography; whole books are referenced where page-ranges are needed; some points and references are repeated multiple times; dates are sometimes wrong (Diadumenianus as a second-century emperor (51)); no clear model is used for abbreviations; Latin phrases are integrated into the syntax of English sentences in an array of different cases (‘Her garment or ueste’ (68)); and there are some sloppy transcriptions of Greek (όρθνινοσ (19)). More significantly, readers may find it frustrating that so much of the text comprises extended quotations from literary sources, often without proper discussion and juxtaposing genres like comedy or tragedy (for example, 122–3) with the assumption that they were all engaging in the same exercise in their exploitation of colours. But it is in the area of translation that G. runs into trouble. While she is critical of the classifications employed by earlier scholars such as J. André (1949), she offers some really quite problematic translations of her own (purpureas amethystinos is rendered ‘lavender’ (26); Tiber's watery (glaucus) mantle is equated with the grey of old age (64); flavus, fulvus, luteus and croceus are all simplified under the heading ‘yellow’ (96)); and although it contains some effective discussion of Latin semantics, the book as a whole lacks the critical reappraisal of the translation difficulties that triggered the whole debate in the first place.

There is much new work to be done into the perception and classification of ancient colours, as well as into the senses that have attracted less attention than sight. This is no longer a niche area: understanding how the ancients divided the world up into the basic units that their eyes, ears, noses, tongues and fingers perceived, and then went on to describe and evaluate those units, is an exercise that is critical to the study of classical literature and art. But it is important that the discussion is sensitive to the plethora of cultural and linguistic differences vis-à-vis the senses, and that scholars understand why ancient colour vision has troubled us for such a long time, and — why it matters.